Traveling is an art; instead of brush strokes and pigments of paint on canvas, it’s experiencing countries’ cultures and scenic locations that imprint on our life’s journey. The portrait becomes the travelers immersing themselves in different places across the world, capturing the emotions and memories made along the way. It was this idea of travel being a form of art that inspired Ashley Ganz to name her luxury travel company Artisans of Leisure. “It’s always about the art of travel, crafting each trip for each traveler,” Ashley remarks when explaining what the name Artisans of Leisure means to her. Ashley’s company seeks to remind and show clients that there is an artistic beauty in travel. Honing in on such beauty in the cultures, authentic experiences, and the countless other factors that make each trip worthwhile allows travelers to make masterpieces of their own.

Upon looking at the sheer number of tours offered by Artisans of Leisure around the world, it becomes clear Artisans of Leisure is unlike any other luxury travel company. Recognized by some of the top travel publications in the world like Conde Nast Traveler and Travel + Leisure, Artisans of Leisure provides clients with exclusive tours around the world with the clients as the artists, deciding where to go and what to include in their tours. Through a team of expert travel advisors, including Ashley herself, clients speak with advisors to craft the perfect tour depending on each client’s interests and needs, from tours of the Galapagos Islands to the terrains of Scandinavia. In essence, no tour is the same. The opportunity to style a tour of one’s own becomes a craft. Artisans of Leisure maintains this artistic concept by having their clients design their own tours and itineraries. In essence, the clients can mark their signatures on their own works of art through travel.

Some clients may have no particular preference over what countries they want to visit while others may know the locations and some specific activities they want to experience. Each client will come to Artisans of Leisure with different wants and interests, but regardless of who the client is, Ashley emphasizes that “everything starts with a conversation”. By determining who the client is on a more personal level by phone call or lengthy emails, Artisans of Leisure ensures clients that they are visiting the most important places in order to have the highest levels of experience with guides, expertise, hotels, and totally seamless travel logistics.

Today, Artisans of Leisure is a widely popular luxury travel company with well-traveled clients returning time and again to experience the vastly different tours offered. But at the very beginning, Ashley Ganz merely had a dream that she wanted to turn into a reality. After spending two years living in Japan, Ashley found herself wanting to also independently travel to other parts of Asia and the South Pacific.  During all of her own travels, however, Ashley never felt like there was an existing luxury travel company that offered tours or itineraries the way she liked it: travel focused on immersing oneself in another culture in a high-end way.

Never wanting to let go of her passion for travel, she first began working within the travel industry upon returning to the U.S. before deciding she wanted to branch out and start her own company. Realizing she could create just that, Artisans of Leisure was born in 2003. Since then, with a team of 10 expert travel advisors, Artisans of Leisure has consistently curated exclusive tours and itineraries to fully immerse clients in international cultures,  providing a combination of insider places from restaurants, shops, hotels, and more.

The tours crafted by Artisans of Leisure are customized and highly personalized for each client. Tours can become as specific as combining romance with food, in which case clients can look at tours like the 13 day Food, Culture, and Romance tour offered in Singapore and Indonesia, or tours as broad as a summer trip to the Mediterranean.  In having a say every step of the way in planning the ideal tour, clients get the chance to understand what makes each chosen destination unique, from the history, design, food, hotels and hospitality, and even the chance to spontaneously walk around and simply experience a place and its atmosphere. Some of the most popular destinations offered by Artisans of Leisure are Morocco, Egypt, Japan, and Italy, but because clients’ interests are always changing, so too do the destinations and tours.

While other luxury travel companies also offer a variety of tours in many locations across the world, Artisans of Leisure sets itself apart from the rest by offering detailed tours in over 75 countries, each of which is determined by the client. Clients of Artisans of Leisure enjoy a myriad of privileges such as room upgrades, complimentary spa treatments, day tours, reservations at acclaimed restaurants, and access to private art collections, museums, gardens, homes, and temples. There is no skimming the surface for Artisans of Leisure, and every client is promised unique experiences not just found in a basic guide book. That is why the bulk of the clientele of Artisans of Leisure are returning customers, because they want trips throughout the year with the same consistency and style that Artisans of Leisure offers each and every time.

Unique to Artisans of Leisure is not only its emphasis on customized and highly personalized tours, but also on private special interest tours that cater to a wide variety of travelers. Ashley found that her clients always wanted tours that offered a little bit of everything in each destination, and this gave her the idea to create special interest tours to appeal to a wider clientele. In picking a theme for a tour, Artisans of Leisure can further showcase the breadth of the company’s knowledge and expertise on any  given topic.

For instance, some of these categories have been driven by clients in the LGBT community who want trips planned that ensure their safety while also suggesting certain destinations that will enhance their traveling experience. Artisans of Leisure offers other special interest tours like Culinary Tours, which range from a wine tour throughout Hungary to a food tour of Morocco to a culinary tour of Sicily. For travelers wanting to focus more on health and wellness, the Spa and Wellness tours give clients the chance to stay at the geothermal spas of Iceland or at an Ayurveda resort in the Himalayas. 

One of the most unique special interest tours offered by Artisans of Leisure is the private genealogy and ancestry tour. A growing trend today, the use of DNA swab kits has allowed us to discover where our roots were laid and where our ancestors lived. Such a discovery has seen many travelers want to return to the countries of their ancestors. This tour allows travelers to rediscover the cultures of their ancestors with the help of travel experts and guides, offering travelers the chance to visit the villages and towns of their ancestors and other places of importance in their pasts. For any special interest tour, including the genealogy and ancestry tour, the goal is always to see the traveler encounter the best of each location while guided by the traveler’s specific interests.

Such a special relationship exists between the traveler and travel advisors at Artisans of Leisure. Ashley notes that some of their clients have been traveling with them since day one, bringing along their families and friends over time to create a more personal experience between them and Artisans of Leisure. Many customers comment that the academic-like structure of the tours, from the level of expertise to the background information provided prior to and during each tours has kept them coming back to Artisans of Leisure every year. 

Artisans of Leisure does not simply plan a trip for a faceless client. Each client is treated like family, in which the company seeks to understand who each client is in order to craft the perfect trip. After working with the same clients for years, Ashley herself reflects, “I am always fascinated by the fact that we are dealing with some of the most interesting and accomplished people in the world who are captains of their industry.” Such accomplished people, no matter how busy, are the ones who personally like to be speaking and working with the advisors at Artisans of Leisure. The clients are attracted to the fact that the travel experts of Artisans of Leisure share the same interests that they do. This dedication is just one of the ways Artisans of Leisure maintains a special relationship with their clients. 

The dynamic nature of Artisans of Leisure is what has helped the company rank as one of the top luxury travel companies in the world. Ashley and her team are constantly updating their online sample tours and itineraries based on current events and feedback from clients. For countries like Israel, which now has relations with Dubai and Morocco, clients can create a combined tour of these three destinations, something that, up until recently, had been impossible to do. Interestingly enough, Ashley found that a lot of their clients like to combine places she never would have thought of combining like Vienna and Malta. Only when her team starts to see patterns of customers asking for similar things to experience do they add these combination tours to the website.

Other new destinations that are on the rise for Artisans of Leisure are places that people had always been intrigued by but never had the chance of going to. This growing sentiment grew drastically because of the Covid-19 pandemic. As travel begins to open up again as the pandemic nears its end, many travelers are jumping at the chance to finally take these trips to lesser known countries like Uzbekistan and other places in central Asia.

The reach of Artisans of Leisure across the globe has led to some of the most distinctive and memorable experiences for travelers. Ashley herself cannot even pick her favorite tour offered by Artisans of Leisure as she comes across different itineraries every single day, “That’s why I love my job. Every trip is different and I learn so much.” There is a reason customers return to Artisans of Leisure for each trip. From the special relationships formed with the company’s travel advisors to the chance for clients to craft their own trips, there is no other luxury travel company like it. Very rarely is a masterpiece made in the world, but with Artisans of Leisure, travelers are ensured a masterpiece is made each time with memories to last a lifetime.